The indolence of mind and body that few escape in this soft, delicious air, the autocracy of the governing at such a distance from France, and the calls of Paris for the humble taxes of the Tahitians, robbed the island of any but the most pressing melioration.  The business of government in these archipelagoes was bizarre comedy-drama, with Tartarins at the front of the stage, and a cursing or slumbrous audience.

Count Polonsky, a Russian-born Frenchman, appeared in court to answer to the charge of letting his automobile engine run when no one was in the car.  He was fined a franc, which he would take from his pocket then and there, but must wait many days to pay, until circumlocution had its round, six weeks after the engine had been at fault.  I was assessed two sous duty on a tooth-brush.  I reached for the coins.

“Mais, non” said the prepose de le douane, “pas maintenant.  No hurry.  We will inform you by post.”

These officials had pleasing manners, as do almost all Frenchmen, and though they uttered many sacres against the home Government and that of these islands, they were fiercely chauvinistic toward foreigners, as are all nationals abroad where jingoism partakes of self-aggrandizement.  The American consul, a new appointee, addressed the customs clerk in his only tongue, Iowan, and received no response.  I spoke to him in French, and the prepose replied in mixed French and English, out of compliment to me.  The consul was enraged, considering himself and the American eagle affronted.  I interposed, but the customs-man answered coldly in English: 

“This is a French possession, and French is the language, or Tahitian.  I speak both.  Why don’t you?  You are supposedly an educated man.”

The Stars and Stripes were unfolded in a breeze of hot words that betrayed the consul’s belief in the prepose’s sinister ancestry and in eternal punishment.  No entente cordiale could ever be cemented after that lingual blast.

The consuls all had honorary memberships in the Cercle Militaire, and none of them entered the Cercle Bougainville, it not being de rigueur.  I had a carte d’invite personelle to that club, and there I went with roused curiosity to hear the other sides of questions already settled for me by the amiable officials and officers on the rue de Rivoli.  I had been warned against the Cercle Bougainville by staid pensioners as being the resort of commoners and worse, of British and American ruffians, of French vulgarians, and of Chinese smugglers.  This advice made a seductive advertisement of the club to me, anxious to know everything real and unveiled about the life here, and to find a contrast to the ennui of the official temple.

A consul said to me:  “Look out for some of those gamblers in that Bougainville joint!  They’ll skin you alive.  They drink like conger-eels.”